May 16, 2017

A bountiful harvest

Since leaving the farm and moving to the shop we have really made great progress on becoming self sufficient in our vegetable growing. Freezing and preserving the excess for use in the off season. We have enough frozen peas and beans to last us all through Winter.

Our huge capsicum crop.......well that's what you get for planting about 16 plants..... has been chopped and frozen too but we are still using the fresh ones off the plants while we can.

The tomatoes, while very slow to ripen (due to the season) produced enough to keep us in Passata, sauce, and paste for the next 12 months.....or more.

The carrots too were a little later this year but we are now enjoying their taste (much nicer than store bought) and will do so right through until September when the weather warms and they start to bolt to seed. The first sowing of parsnips this year was a complete failure.....which has never happened to me before. But it was second time lucky and they are now growing well.....not quite ready yet.....hopefully in about another 4 weeks and I will be enjoying Russell's parsnip mash again. We won't be short of onions either, and this year for the first time I hope to get some garlic in the ground. I have even trialed freezing some zucchini for use in soups later on in Winter. I'm not sure how it will go but as they say.....nothing ventured nothing gained. Oh and don't mention chillis.......enough of them also.....dried and frozen!

But it's not just vegetables that we grow. We have enjoyed strawberries and a bumper crop of raspberries this year. The plants are very messy and untidy but all is forgiven when I taste those delicious raspberries. I still have about 3 bags in the freezer too! And of course everyone knows about our apples.......eaten fresh, made into pies and also stewed, sometimes with rhubarb.....yum. But best of all....cider. Russell is bottling 2 barrels at the moment, and tomorrow he plans to pulp enough apples to get another 4 barrels on to ferment. This batch is made using our Kingston Black apples and is quite a different colour to others........it will be interesting to taste test!

And of course there are our pumpkins. Last season we harvested about 15 pumpkins. We were disappointed so Russell spent quite a bit of time preparing the ground for this seasons planting.....and it certainly paid off.

I grew them from seed and also planted some Borage in between the plants to help with pollination....the bees love the blue flowers. The plants thrived.

Sunday night we decided that it was time to harvest them before the bush rats did it for us. There was no way we could carry that many pumpkins up to the garage so we used the ute. Here are some of the Sibleys, Jarradales and Queensland Blues.

Along with the Butternuts the final tally is 110......that's 2 a week, every week of the year.....

......so I think that we will be right for pumpkins over the next 12 months!

It has been a little dream of mine to set up a roadside stall to sell our excess harvest (after gifting to relations and friends). Years ago I used to sell plants from home so who knows.........maybe next year this will happen.